Pam Brown

Two poems

On eventually entering the library

(in faux-naïf)

in every ear
a black foam dot —
is the entire CBD
in mourning
or off to cocktails ?
scuffs,
lacquered toenails,
zimmy black suits.
rows of shiny packets
in the platform slot-machines
celebratory, glinting.
that crumpled white shirt, this
old tan bag, or black,
this imploded pair of thongs.
corporatism’s doom ?
everything seems stretched,
quite worn out
like tangled muscles, middle-aged.
my own insouciance a cover,
on the steep escalator
behind the woman-in-black
before me
and, followed,
pressed to walk
automatically
up
the tarnished moving stairs,
to imagine this
as ‘workout’ —
propelled, at the top,
towards a crowd
rushing the opposite way
past skateboards, beggars,
students, ning-nongs (everyone’s up
at 8 a.m.) —
hot chips bar,
through the ticket gate,
out
onto a cluster
of disfigured houses.

briskly, past the building
that holds
an as-yet-unsent letter
rejecting my application
for a brief change to routine,
well, no, really,
an application
for a JOLT — to think
on paper with Pasolini,
else-where and then —
no go —
so,
I’ll pass the building
daily, and — daily,
as usual —
think
‘how chronically unfashionable I am’
even after all the building’s staff
has relocated
to safer, better, brighter premises
or, arts-functionaries, I quote John Berger —
saying, to put it more baldly,
‘I don’t sell much.’
not somewhere between
success and failure,
I’m altogether
elsewhere

from the footpath
steamy glass fridges
in adjoining
takeaway milkbars
bring on
a (sudden) bout of
self-service indecision

(excessive choice
‘no iced tea’. . .
hopeless. . .)

in the newsagency
I check and play
ozlotto —
the proprietor
proffered affability
once I started to stop
for The Weekly Guardian
as well as the lottery,
on he goes, today,
— this summer humidity,
the weather bureau
predicts alternatives
to the actual weather
of any day — weird
weather, terrible weather,
strange. . .

inside the university campus
a man in a business suit
whose eyes seem smashed
with recent pain
passes dazedly —
he looks like
Yevgeny Yevtushenko looked years ago,
only smaller ,
or maybe Vosnesensky
( who I saw reading at the Con
but can’t remember physically)
and further up
on the horrible gouged phenomenon
of nineteen-sixties
grey concrete steps
an overweight security guard
in a boy’s boyish cap
& blue university uniform
is relishing
a meat pie

(hurrah)

this is
the last morning shift
of the century
for me,
and that’s what I say
to Agnes Wroblewski
when we cross paths
in the shady sandstone quad —
‘Kojooshko’ — Agnes who told me
that —
the correct pronunciation
of Mount Kosciusko

surrounded by scenery.
why don’t those
migratory birds
leave here ?
is it such
a beauteous ecology ?

having landed in times
when the usual response
to beauty
is to buy it
or to try to
win it,
I make my clunky gestures
towards
a build-a-bricks outlook
(construction, not architecture)

how do I do this thing
& appear not to ? at least
never be seen doing it.

not writing
for any cause
& feeling
consequent guilt
about it.

(exactly
how well-motivated
are you?)

an epiphytic magnavox box
clings to a telegraph pole
beginning the link outwards

transitive and optimistic —
flick that crow off the antenna !
head pell-mell
for the grammar !

But wait — there’s more! ...from Pam Brown’sauthor notes page here on the Jacket site, you can link to a photo and a biographical note, and also to dozen or so Jacket pages where her work features or where she is reviewed or interviewed.